I lost my £7m fortune – because I can’t read: How dyslexia robbed Keith Harris of his riches and cancer almost killed him... But he and Orville are still laughing

He is the star best known for the radioactive-green duck that sat on his knee throughout the 1980s. Keith Harris and his sidekick Orville should be basking in retirement and enjoying the riches gleaned from years of success.

But today the 66-year-old ventriloquist reveals that he has lost £7million because of his dyslexia, performs at Butlin’s to make ends meet, and has battled against a severe form of cancer.

Keith says he was labelled ‘thick’ at school and, because he never learned to read, when he became a performer he blithely signed many unfavourable contracts – and continued to do so throughout his 50-year career.

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Keith Harris with wife Sarah, a former model, and Orville his duck at the home they all share near Blackpool

He is still working as a result, but insists he is not struggling for money. He would never retire – ‘You don’t give up showbusiness,’ he says, ‘it gives you up.’

But these days, instead of starring in his own television show, he can be found on stage at Butlin’s and Haven holiday camps, and in pantomime.

This year he’s starring in his 50th turn with Orville in Aladdin at Hull New Theatre. And he’s delighted just to be there – he was forced to cancel the show last year when he was diagnosed with cancer and was given just 12 months to live.

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He nearly died on the operating table while having his cancerous spleen removed and couldn’t work for more than a year, which did nothing for his finances.

‘I’ve made about £7 million throughout my career, but I’ve lost it all too,’ Keith says at the five-bedroom home in Poulton-le-Fylde, near Blackpool, that he shares with his fourth wife Sarah, 48, a former model, and their two teenage children. ‘It’s all down to the dyslexia,’ he adds. ‘I can’t read or write. Reading contracts? I didn’t, I just signed them. I got into trouble many times. I signed myself away for 14 years to someone once – 25 per cent I was paying. I had no idea.

Keith Harris and Orville the duck won the Channel 5 reality show The Farm

‘I’ve been brought up to trust people, but you have to be careful. People think you’re very rich and want to see if they can make money out of you.’

Asked if he can read at all, he says: ‘Not fantastically well. I’m much better than I used to be but I’ve never read a book in my life. I've had to con my way through for many years by pretending to read scripts.

‘I’d ask people how they would read something and then remember it. I felt embarrassed about it, of course, because everyone thought I was intelligent.

‘You put on a front. No one knows you can’t read or write or spell.’

Keith is good at putting on a happy face despite his troubles and terrifying illness. The show, as he says, must go on.

It was during a holiday at the family villa in Portugal last August that Keith’s health problems started. He had been feeling uncomfortably bloated while he was away, and when he returned to Britain he started getting night sweats.

When Louis met Keith Harris and Orville... Keith was the subject of a Louis Theroux documentary in a BBC series that also included Ann Widdecombe, Neil and Christine Hamilton, boxer Chris Eubank, disgraced PR Max Clifford and DJ Sir Jimmy Savile

In October he was admitted to hospital, where doctors found his spleen dangerously enlarged.

Keith recalls hearing them discussing his fate as he was coming round from the gruelling five-hour operation to remove it.

‘They were saying, “Do you think he’s going to make it?” ’ he says.

‘I remember thinking, “Of course I’ll make it – I've got panto!” ’

The spleen was cancerous and the doctors, fearing the cancer had spread, gave him a year to live.

But after four months of gruelling chemotherapy in which he lost his hair, his hearing, the feeling in his feet and 6st, he was given the all-clear in May. He will now endure a stem-cell transplant next month as a preventive measure.

‘I’ll be in panto in December, though,’ Keith says optimistically. ‘You can’t just sit around feeling sorry for yourself.

‘My family is the most important thing, but if you’re good at what you do, make people laugh and people pay you for it, then why wouldn't you do it?’

Keith has been performing since he was three. His first act was as a dummy for his late ventriloquist father, Norman, before he branched out on his own.

Keith Harris at the start of his long career in showbusiness

The Keith Harris Show ran on the BBC for eight years from 1982 to 1990. He also had chart success with the highly irritating Orville’s Song, which sold more than 400,000 copies. But when the TV show was cancelled, he admits spiralling into depression and drinking heavily before contemplating drowning himself, ironically, in the local duck pond.

‘When your bubble bursts and you’re not as popular – you’d been playing to 3,000 people in a theatre and then go out and there are 30 people – it’s very deflating,’ he says.

‘But you build yourself up again. All right, some comics today play to 20,000 people in one night whereas I play to 20,000 in 20 nights. After 50 years in this business you work to whatever audience you've got.

‘I did hear that Michael McIntyre earned £21million in a year. I don’t get how they've become so successful in such a short time.

‘McIntyre doesn't make me laugh whereas Les Dawson and Ken Dodd do make me laugh. Jimmy Carr? I don’t find it funny when somebody in a nice suit stands there and talks about basically nothing.

‘There’s nothing for kids to laugh at now, but I’m not complaining,’ he adds. ‘I've done very well and I still do very well.

‘I’m one of the highest paid people at Butlin’s. I've got ideas for television. I thought I could do a TV show with Cuddles (his other puppet) and Orville that teaches children manners. But the TV people don’t like to back an old horse. They say, “I don’t think it’s what we want any more.” ’

Still in the business: Keith receives a kiss from comedian Jim Davidson while Julie Davidson attempts to strangle her husband

The constant rebuffs have angered Sarah. She says: ‘Keith’s a master of his art. Give him a chance, I say. What have you to lose by using Keith Harris?’

Sarah had been an international fashion model when she met Keith in 1996 after her friend suggested going to meet the ‘fella with the bird’ at his former nightspot in Poulton, called Club L’Orange.

‘I thought it was Rod Hull and Emu,’ Sarah says. ‘When I saw Keith I was quite disappointed!’

But the couple got talking and fell in love. They married in 1999 and had daughter Kitty a year later, followed by son Shenton in 2001. Keith also has a daughter, Sky, 26, with his second wife, singer Jacqui Scott.

And then, of course, there’s Orville. The old bird, who is insured for £100,000, is looking good for 45.

‘That’s Amy,’ Keith says to him.

‘Hello, Amy,’ Orville says. ‘She’s nice, in’t she?’

What does he think of Keith’s illness, I ask?

‘It’s sad, in’t it? I’ll have to work on my own,’ he says, before adding: ‘He’s my right-hand man.’

‘The old jokes are the best,’ Keith says with a chuckle. ‘And I am an old joke.’

The Mail on Sunday has made a donation to Cancer Research UK on Keith and Sarah’s behalf.